I love everything Emily St. John Mandel writes, and Sea of Tranquility is no exception. The way she manages to intertwine stories while maintaining suspense is unparalleled. I highly recommend this to everyone.

A story of time travel, moon colonization, and pandemics. It is imaginative and beautifully written.

I liked the story but it was really slow going for me. I was pleased with the way she tied it all together at the end because I wasn't sure where it was going some of the time.

Mandel really blew me away with this one. Sea of Tranquility is unlike anything I've ever read. A trip through time, a trip through space, a trip that I didn't want to leave. This book got me out of a reading slump. 4 stars

This novel ties in three storylines that take place within a 500 year timespan. The timelines are confusing, the characters were okay, but by the end I was just feeling confused.

"Sea of Tranquility" by Emily St. John Mandel is a beautifully written novel that captures the essence of human connection and resilience in the face of tragedy. Mandel's signature style of weaving together different narratives and timelines is on full display here, as the story shifts between the perspectives of several characters whose lives intersect in unexpected ways.

One of the things I particularly enjoyed about "Sea of Tranquility" is how it references Mandel's earlier books. Fans of her work will recognize familiar themes and motifs, such as the importance of art in times of crisis and the ways in which the past shapes our present. However, "Sea of Tranquility" also stands on its own as a unique and compelling story that explores new territory.

The characters in this novel are complex and fully realized, each grappling with their own personal demons and searching for a sense of purpose and connection in a world that can be cruel and unforgiving. Mandel's prose is both elegant and understated, imbuing each scene with a sense of quiet beauty and grace.

Overall, I would highly recommend "Sea of Tranquility" to anyone who enjoys literary fiction that explores the intricacies and interconnectedness of the human experience. It's a book that will stay with you long after you turn the final page.

The author of Station Eleven, now an HBO Miniseries, returns with a new science fiction tale. In Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility, it is the year 1912, it is the year 2020, it is the year 2203, it takes place in a Canadian wilderness, it takes place on the moon. Moving through time and space Mandel finds our connections to one another and ourselves.

An Englishman sent to exile in the Canadian wilderness gets lost and sees a bright light, the whooshing of a space ship, and the sounds of a violin. Did he see some kind of future or is he having a breakdown? It is 2007 and an investigator is trying to track down a young woman who is responsible for a shaky home video that shows a flash in the sky. Her name is Vincent, the same Vincent from Mandel’s book, The Glass Hotel. Now we are in the future in 2203 on a book tour on the moon. The author is promoting a new book. This author was made famous for writing a book about a pandemic. As she tours both the Moon and Earth, another pandemic begins to creep into the news. We are then even further into the future with two revelations: that time travel is possible and they live in a simulation. This segment ties all the other storylines together in this wild ride of a book.

There is a fascinating blurring of the narrative and reality. There seems to be a bit of auto-fiction as the Covid pandemic hits just as Mandel was promoting The Glass Hotel. She also seems to make this book a sort of sequel to The Glass Hotel as components of that story are retold here. The author in the book is also promoting a new book, that seems to not catch on, but is known for her previous book about a pandemic. There is a weird disorienting experience as fiction and reality are woven together. It takes the brilliant mind of this author to pull it off.

Favorite Passages

It’s shocking to wake up in one world and find yourself in another by nightfall, but the situation isn’t actually all that unusual. You wake up married, then your spouse dies over the course of the day; you wake in peacetime and by noon your country is at war; you wake in ignorance and by evening it’s clear that a pandemic is already here. You wake on a book tour with several days left to go, and by evening you’re racing toward home, your suitcase abandoned in a hotel room.”

My point is, there’s always something. I think, as a species, we have a desire to believe that we’re living at the climax of the story. It’s a kind of narcissism. We want to believe that we’re uniquely important, that we’re living at the end of history, that now, after all these millennia of false alarms, now is finally the worst that it’s ever been, that finally we have reached the end of the world.”

this is what the Time Institute never understood: if definitive proof emerges that we’re living in a simulation, the correct response to that news will be so what. A life lived in a simulation is still a life.”

Emily St. John Mandel is truly a gifted writer to take a premise that sounds complex and technical (multiple timelines and POV characters) and end up with a novel this elegant and graceful. Mandel's characters and their connections to each other are more important here than technobabble about time travel and the simulation hypothesis, and somehow it all comes together for a satisfying, hopeful finale. I thought it was lovely.

This book is powerful, engaging and unputdownable. This is told in shifting timelines, many characters to jeep straight and so many interesting concepts discussed.
In the end this is an overall solid fantasy novel you won't soon forget.

I struggled with this one. I didn't enjoy the 1912 storyline and I had a hard time getting into this. I know there have been many positive reviews, and I loved St. John Mandel's previous works but this one fell a bit short for me.

This story felt dreamlike, stories and timelines nested within each other. In some ways the story felt like a peak into the author's dreams, as we revisit past characters, books, and themes. I've read at least two her past books referenced in this one, it's interesting because having read them I brought much more to this work than if I hadn't, so I honestly have no idea how this book would sit with a reader who hasn't read and of Mandel's previous books.

Emily St. John Mandel has a way of writing that feels like magic, before writing this review I looked back on my review of other works of hers I have read and noticed a piece of my review that I could have just as easily written for this book.

"Sometimes with books that have various intertwining storylines and characters I have trouble connecting to and truly caring about some or all of the characters. Either finding specific ones that I look forward to reading and others whose parts I find tedious, or finding all of them interesting in their own way but not really forming emotional attachments to any of them. This book was different, each of the characters that it spent time with felt like a real person to me, they were people I came to care for and people who seemed able to exist beyond the pages of a book."

Another great book by Emily St. John Mandel. She always evokes an eerie, interesting atmosphere that has you questioning what his happening and keeps you turning the page to find out.

I'd been hearing a bit of buzz about this book and so I was quite looking forward to it.

1912, Vancouver Island. Eighteen-year-old Edwin St. Andrew has crossed the Atlantic by steamship. He enters the Canadian wilderness, open to exploring and taking in what he might see when he hears the haunting sounds of a violin echoing in an airship terminal. Something that definitely should not be.

Some two hundred years later, writer Olive Llewellyn of the second moon colony is on a book tour on Earth. Her novel, a bestseller about a pandemic, contains a strange passage about a man in an airship terminal, playing his violin for spare change when a forest grows up around him.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, a detective, Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, is hired to investigate something strange happening in the North American wilderness. What he finds is something that can't possibly be true, a blending of time that could seriously damage the timeline as we know it.

When I write that I had been hearing some buzz about this book, I should note that what I was hearing was the title of the book, the author's name, and anticipation for this book to be released. I was not hearing what it was about. Though had I known it was about time and/or time travel, I probably would still have been interested in reading this. But I definitely felt a bit let down once I was finished.

Getting involved in a sweeping epic (and a book like this which covers covers hundreds of years and multiple generations surely must qualify as an epic) is a daunting task in the best of circumstances but making this a time-travel epic is gutsy. While there are a few good time-travel books out there, it's a subject which, if you don't control it well, will get out of hand, become confusing, and/or create more questions than answers.

Author Emily St. John Mandel's writing is very poetic and lyrical and in many cases, it would really enhance a book. But in this case it often feels like it's fighting against the story - being poetic in language but not in theme.

I seem to be a bit of an anomaly in this thinking. There are a lot of review and it's rated over 4.0 on Goodreads, but this does not make my recommendation list, but garners an 'eh'.

Looking for a good book? Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel was a much-anticipated book and there are many who find great charms within, but this reviewer doesn't place it very high on the recommendation list.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

I am not a science fiction fan but this was well written and I wish I understood it like I think I was supposed to.

Thank you NetGalley and Pan Macmillan for the physical copy. I'm an Emily St. John Mandel fan forever. Whatever she writes I'll read. Incredible

Very enjoyable and approachable even fir those who don’t normally read sci-fi. It was a pleasant surprise to come across some characters from previous novels.

I wish I'd made time to read "Sea of Tranquility" closer to its release date. This is a story as starkly beautiful and elegant as the moon itself. I was initially drawn to this book because of the fantastic cover art and the intriguing title. I also knew the author had written a couple other well-received books so I felt confident this would be a worthwhile read.

And while I did love “Sea of Tranquility,” it’s difficult to synopsize or explain. It reminds me of a poem or piece of classical music - art that leaves an indelible impression but eludes straightforward explanation. The author touches on the mundane terror of living through a pandemic; the common experience of loneliness; how time eventually comes for us all.

While I’m struggling to articulate the brilliance of Emily St. John Mandel’s book, trust that is an experience worth undertaking. I will be recommending this book to my library patrons and promoting as a Staff Pick. I also look forward to future releases from this author.

Incredible genre-changing follow up to The Glass Hotel featuring time travel and pandemics of the past and future.

I was really looking forward to this novel and to see additional ties between this and Mandel's prior releases. Unfortunately, these connections and the choice of the author to conflate her fictional pandemic with our true history of 2020 circumstances didn't lock in for me as a reader. This story reads quickly, the writing is compelling and the overall story intriguing, but it didn't live up to what I had expected.

I dearly loved Station Eleven and so much of Sea of Tranquility reminded me of that title - the switching timelines, poignant observations of life and humanity, and beautiful prose. I enjoyed this title far more than The Glass Hotel. So many characters make a reappearance in this new title giving me such a nostalgic feeling while reading the book. Overall, wonderful lyrical prose and such a brilliant execution of time travel.